There’s been a lot of confusion on Google+ about when businesses will be allowed to have pages, and why certain companies and news outlets were allowed to violate the initial prohibition. There was a lot of bellyaching (see above) the other day and then heads started to roll. On Thursday, Google purged the unauthorized accounts of companies such as CBS News, NBC News, the Seattle Times, and Mashable News, which now is founder Pete Cashmore’s page. (see above.) No need to despair, capitalists! In “the next few months” Google will roll out “business profiles.” Until then, as TheNextWeb reported:

It seems however that Google is encouraging businesses, for the time being, to pick a real person from its organization as a mouthpiece who can share links on the network.

Color is the new photo-sharing app that allows you to share photos with friends and strangers, with a catch: They must be within 150 feet of you. I’ve tried to use it since it was released Wednesday. I say try because it is useless unless somebody else has the app and is nearby. I finally found somebody in Center City, Philadelphia, using the app. I was at an underground mall. He was in an office somewhere nearby. The photo he took was about an hour old – of his office, or somebody’s office. Whoa! I am not alone at being underwhelmed or just plain baffled by the app. It received so much criticism on its first day that its CEO, Bill Nguyen, told Mashable that the app would be getting a major update ASAP. So, it sucks, or people don’t understand how to use it – so what? It’s noteworthy because it launched with a $41 million investment. Again, so what? There is an ongoing debate about whether we are in another tech-industry bubble. One warning sign to look for is when investors continue to pour money into exhausted ideas. For example: photo sharing. Theoretically, Color can be interesting, but a massive amount of people need to be using it. And even then, it may only be interesting at events with lots of people. Until then, it has switched from becoming the target of frustration to becoming a joke about becoming the “dick pic” app. More

First, an update on the Gmail mess. Based on a report on the Washington Post’s website, I said the problem was fixed. However, it apparently lingered a few days. Google says it’s fixed now. I highlighted the fact that Gmail accounts are backed up on computer tapes, which means that the software update error that caused the latest outage was not physically connected to the backup. So it’s reassuring to know your data is not lost. But if you haven’t been able to access it since last weekend, that’s a problem, especially for businesses. The solution to that is to have your own backup and also have contingency plans in place, as you would for other mishap/disaster scenarios.

Now let’s turn to infographics. I’ll use an infographic if it is well done. Mashable loves infographics. They are supposed to help you understand data, but some aren’t so good at that. And some are just ridiculously confusing. Infographics are more likely to fail if they are overloaded with information. All that said, I want to learn how to make simple ones that I can use here as original illustrations. But I fear I might be wasting a lot of time making graphics, as is mentioned in my favorite infographic after the jump. More